As-Sa'iqa

as-Sa'iqa was a Palestinian Ba'athist militant group formed in September 1966 by Zuheir Mohsen as a pro-Syria organization. Its name comes from the Arabic phrase for "shock troops", and it was used as a proxy force by Syria during the Lebanese Civil War. In 1976, when relations between Yasser Arafat and Hafez al-Assad soured, as-Sa'iqa was expelled from the PLO, and it joined the Palestinian National Salvation Front during the civil war, fighting alongside PFLP-GC and Fatah al-Intifada against the PLO in the War of the Camps. Because of its status as a Syrian proxy, it was not popular among Palestinians after the end of the civil war, and it became wholly insignificant outside of Syria, not even taking part in the Second Intifada.